Business Transformation and Digitization Dominate Channel Directions Live 2016
What’s the current state of partnering? Channel partners and vendors alike got an up close perspective at the recent Channel Directions Live 2016 event hosted by Penton in Scottsdale, Ariz., Sept. 12-14.
September 27, 2016
What’s the current state of partnering? Channel partners and vendors alike got an up close perspective at the recent Channel Directions Live 2016 event hosted by Penton in Scottsdale, Ariz., Sept. 12-14.
At the event, more than 200 attendees joined together to identify and share best practices on everything from hiring strategies to onboarding new technologies to embracing new business models. The event, sponsored by Arrow, Avnet, Datto, Insight and others, also showcased several thought leaders who debuted new thinking and business insights.
Former Cisco Senior Vice President and New York Times best-selling author Inder Sidhu dazzled attendees with his presentation on digitization, which is the subject of his latest book, The Digital Revolution. (Full disclosure, yours truly teamed with Sidhu to help produce the book, which was published earlier this by Pearson Press.) Sidhu spoke on the power of multiple digital technologies that, when used in different combinations, can have a transformative impact on every industry, company and career.
“When you take on digital technology and add it to another, you can change the lives of millions as was the case when technologists married VisiCalc to the IBM PC. That changed the careers of millions of accountants and financial professionals,” he said. “Today, innovators are combining social media, mobility, Big Data, The Cloud, The Internet of Things and more to transform not just billions of lives but trillions of processes and interactions. The cumulative effect will be unlike anything we have every seen before.”
To help practitioners, Sidhu walked his audience through several of the many opportunities and concerns that practitioners will face. These include business disruption, privacy and security that solution providers must help their customers overcome in order to be successful.